Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2016 9:19 am Post subject: New York Times to reflect on its own biases

( I've never read the New York times but it sounds as bad is the Toronto star , obviously there coverage was so biased towards Hilary Clinton and so extremely anti trump they had no clue what people were really thinking or knew but decided to ignore the truth )

New York Times publisher vows to 'rededicate' itself to reporting honestly

Published November 12, 2016
· FoxNews.com

The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would “reflect” on its coverage of this year’s election while rededicating itself to reporting on “America and the world” honestly.

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s embattled publisher, appealed to Times readers for their continued support.

“We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers,” the letter states.

New York Post columnist and former Times reporter Michael Goodwin wrote, "because it (The Times) demonized Trump from start to finish, it failed to realize he was onto something. And because the paper decided that Trump’s supporters were a rabble of racist rednecks and homophobes, it didn’t have a clue about what was happening in the lives of the Americans who elected the new president.

Sulzbergers letter was released after the paper’s public editor, Liz Spayd, took the paper to task for its election coverage. She pointed out how its polling feature Upshot gave Hillary Clinton an 84 percent chance as voters went to the polls.

She compared stories that the paper ran about President-elect Donald Trump and Clinton, where the paper made Clinton look functional and organized and the Trump discombobulated.

Spayd wrote, “Readers are sending letters of complaint at a rapid rate. Here’s one that summed up the feelings succinctly, from Kathleen Casey of Houston: “Now, that the world has been upended and you are all, to a person, in a state of surprise and shock, you may want to consider whether you should change your focus from telling the reader what and how to think, and instead devote yourselves to finding out what the reader (and nonreaders) actually think.”

She wrote about another reader who asked that the paper should focus on the electorate instead of “pushing the limited agenda of your editors.”

“Please come down from your New York City skyscraper and join the rest of us.”

Sulzberger—who insisted that the paper covered both candidates fairly-- also sent a note to staffers on Friday reminding the newsroom to “give the news impartially, without fear or favor.”

“But we also approach the incoming Trump administration without bias,” he said.

The facade of the New York Times building is seen in New York. (REUTERS)

On Sunday, the publisher and the executive editor of the New York Times published a letter to the paper’s readers, promising to “rededicate” the paper to its “fundamental mission”. That mission, they said, is to “report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you.”

This is as close as the Times is likely to come to apologizing to its readers for a year and a half of unbalanced--and often unhinged--coverage of the presidential race.

SEAN HANNITY: TRUMP MUST IGNORE THE MEDIA AND TRUST HIS GUT

I grew up in an era when the New York Times was the greatest newspaper in the world. Throughout my political career, there were plenty of moments when I thought the paper’s coverage had an unfair slant. But I knew it remained America’s most revered newspaper, and that generally its reporters held themselves to the highest standards.

It was sad to see a 165-year-old paper destroy its credibility over one election season. But the Times’s complete abandonment of its old standards was obvious to anyone who read its coverage.

Thus I watched with some regret as all of that went out the window this election cycle. It was sad to see a 165-year-old paper destroy its credibility over one election season. But the Times’s complete abandonment of its old standards was obvious to anyone who read its coverage.

The paper wrote stories that were unrelentingly hostile to Trump and his supporters.

It allowed reporters to include their personal opinions and political analysis in news coverage.

It allowed political reporters to spew their animosity to Trump on social media. (I am old enough to remember when reporters maintained the conceit that they did not have political opinions.)

It published stories about Trump in which it distorted the accounts of interviewees, according to the subjects’ own testimony.

It published front page stories and editorials with headlines that accused Trump of “lying”--but never so characterized any of Hillary Clinton’s well-documented lies.

And now the same publisher and the same editor that oversaw this partisan assault are promising to “rededicate” themselves to reporting “honestly”. Perhaps even the paper’s liberal readership has tired of reporting that increasingly resembles the state-controlled propaganda of totalitarian regimes.

Before readers take the paper at its word, they should ask its leadership some of the following questions:

1. Does the Times have any reporters, editors, or columnists who will say they voted for Trump, and has it hired any new ones?

2. Has it hired any reporters who are even Republicans?

3. Has it changed its policies that allowed journalists to express their opinions about the events and people they covered in their news stories?

4. Will it ask the Pulitzer Prize board to withdraw, and its reporters to return, any prizes that might be awarded for news stories that contained reporters’ personal opinions?

5. Have its editors retracted misleading news headlines that expressed opinions or pure speculation--such as the paper’s coverage of Trump’s tax returns?

6. Has it fired reporters who admitted to writing politically motivated “news” stories and encouraged interview subjects to talk to them so they could stop Trump?

7. Has it retracted its shameful election-eve front-page story “reporting” on Trump’s innermost thoughts and feelings, virtually every sentence of which is filled with reporters’ opinions and speculations--featuring claims like “he is struggling to suppress his bottomless need for attention”?

If the answer to all of these questions is “no”--why would anyone believe that the paper is now “rededicated” to honesty? And why would anyone trust the New York Times to report on American politics?

Newt Gingrich, a Republican, was speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. He is the author of the new novel "Treason" (Center Street, October 11) and co-author, with his wife Callista Gingrich, of "Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation's History and Future" (Center Street, May 17, 2016).

The public editor for The New York Times said Sunday that the number of complaints the newspaper received over its coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign spiked to five times its normal level.

Complaints to the paper included claims that its coverage was biased against Trump during the general election as well as accusations from readers that it favored candidate Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primaries.

“My colleague Thomas Feyer, who oversees the letters to the editor, says the influx from readers is one of the largest since Sept. 11,” public editor Liz Spayd wrote.

Spayd says others are calling into customer care at multiple times the usual rate and had “a variety of concerns, including the election coverage.”

Last week, President-elect Trump tweeted the Times had lost thousands of subscribers since the election – a fact strongly refuted by the paper which reports having the largest one-week subscription increase since the first week it rolled out its digital pay model in 2011.

“I hope any chest thumping about the impressive subscriber bump won’t obscure a hard-eyed look at coverage,” Spayd wrote. “Because from my conversations with readers, and from the emails that have come into my office, I can tell you there is a searing level of dissatisfaction out there with many aspects of the coverage.”

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forumYou can attach files in this forumYou can download files in this forum